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NASA Focus Group Features

NASA Focus Group Features

Since 2012, I have been an editor (along with Andrew Pohorille of NASA Ames/UCSF) of a series of articles for the NASA Origins of Life Astrobiology Focus Group from investigators in the field. These essays are aimed at an undergraduate level. Typically, they are written about recent discoveries from the authors’ research, and they are intended to communicate advances in astrobiology to those outside the field. Below is a list of a few recent articles from the website and their authors.

This collection of three essays from Mike Yarus, Loren Williams, and Gustavo Caetano-Annolés describes these investigators’ thoughts regarding how life’s translation machinery – the ribosome, a RNA-protein hybrid assembly, which reads RNA transcripts and translates them into protein – evolved.

This two-part series of essays from Philipp Holliger and Steven Benner describe their work on nucleic acids systems comprised of different bases and backbones than DNA and RNA, and their potential relevance to astrobiology.